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Telling Some "Fibs" Of My Own

By retrospectacle on June 28, 2006.

Whilst perusing my latest copy of SEED magazine, I came across an interesting poetry structure not unlike a haiku. What I'm talking about is "the Fib," which is a poetic structure based on the Fibonacci sequence; the lines consist of 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 (and so on) syllables. While SEED published the "fib" poetry of Jason Zuzga, I thought I'd try my hand at them in my very own forum right here.

Shyness

Fish
dive
deeply,
mouths agape,
fins proud and ragged,
filtering the oceans apart
until shimmer-hooked and then flopping in boat bottoms,
when gills heave, gasp, drowning in air; eyes glaze
like dropped marbles, clouded and cracked, but holding.

(More under the fold.....)

Ego

She
will
nod as
you pass her
and you both will know
you are young and raw, half-bitten,
spitten in disgust like fruit picked before its season.

Heaven

Dead
leaves
jump back
on the trees,
a reverse whirlwind
and an impossible sunset
seeking their origins, the life from whence they came.

Tags
Poetry

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Black
and
White are
All I see
In my infancy
Red and yellow then came to be
Reaching out to me
Lets me see

etc etc...

Now I'm curious about what the record number of lines is for a fib poem. Lines 8 and above will quickly go from run on sentences to strangely formatted novels.

I dig it. Structural approaches to composition seem to reap benefits - but then all approaches do. Mind you, this approach has velocity.

And velocity is exciting...

I find some of the fib alluring but not especially creative. There is, for example, the golden spiral for which it stands:

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My poetic word playground is scientificly based <-)